On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Atte André Jensen <atte@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > I write a little code from time to time. I just discovered that at least > some of it is still under GPL. Now I'm thinking about changing that to > GPLv3. > > 1) Can I Just Do It, simply by stating on the webpage and/or in the software > that it's under GPLv3. If you own the copyright, and it doesn't use any GPLv2-only libraries, then yes. Though it won't affect any copies previously distributed. > 2) Is it (as I understand from > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.html) recommended to change to > GPLv3? What are the main advantages (both for the community and me) with > GPLv3 and are there any drawbacks? I think the practical drawbacks are: * it is not compatible with GPLv2, so you can't mix v2-only and v3-only code (you can mix v2-or-later and v3 code, but the result is plain v3) * the licence is quite complex (although I have read and understood the whole of GPLv2, I can't say the same for v3) As a consequence of this second point, I can't say with real confidence what the advantages of v3 are. I _think_ that the main ones are to disallow distributors from using technical means to prevent users from running modified code, and to be more specific about how any patents associated with the code must be licensed. I'm sticking with v2 for my code at the moment, but there is some complexity because some projects I work on have the "or later" clause and some do not. I do worry that at some point, someone will change to v3-only a library required by a v2-only application, and so make the application illegal to distribute with newer versions of the library. Indeed, it's not impossible that this has already happened and I just haven't noticed it. Chris _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
